Are auditors finally going to be held accountable for their role in the financial meltdown? Time will tell but there can be no doubt some must have missed the red flags and, more important, ignored the changing business model and risks inherent in dealing with financial instruments such as sub-prime mortgages and credit default swaps. Auditors are supposed to understand the environment in which their clients operate and use that knowledge and related risk assessment to determine proper audit procedures. It appears that Deloitte failed to do so and there may be other cases waiting in the wings.

2. Chris MacDonald writing in the Business Ethics Blog has a new post called –

Now, just a little over a century later, Americans take for granted the right to cross our country in the comfort of their automobiles, and we can make trips in hours that used to take days. That’s the good news. The not-so-good news is that our nation is crisscrossed with roads and bridges that require regular repair, millions are killed or injured annually in autmobile accidents, our cars are eating up the ozone layer with their toxic emissions, Americans drive instead of walking and, as a result, suffer from record levels of obesity and associated diseases, and traffic jams have become a daily nightmare. (Living in a city that’s earned the dubious distinction of having the worst traffic in America, I should know.)

4. Josephson on Business Ethics and Leadership has a fascinating article up on doctors’ conflicts of interest.

Even though such payments are legal, most medical policymakers agree that they are not ethical. Special trips, meals, and “educational opportunities” are very common strategies that companies use to create stronger bonds with their clients, and to achieve the basic goal of any business — to sell more. In most industries, such gift-giving doesn’t raise any particular ethical red flags. But in medicine, the person getting the gifts isn’t the person taking the drugs. The person taking the drugs is you. And if your doctor has prescribed you that drug when a different drug – or no drug at all – might be the better choice, then it’s likely you’d want to know about it.